Good evening everyone. I'm calling to order this special meeting of council which is convened for the purpose of receiving the mayor's annual status report of the town or as I like to call it the state of the town address. Madame clerk, do we have any regrets? >> We do. Mayor Burton, counselor Giddings. >> Thank you. Uh, councelor, are there any declarations of pecuniary interest? Madame clerk, there are none. Um, all right then, uh, let's begin. I'd like to welcome everyone to the 20th annual State of the Town address. 20 years ago, we who were here then made a promise. We said we would create the most livable town in Canada. I said we would check our work in this room every year. No mayor had done that before. I hope no mayor ever stops what we've started. Remember where we began. From 1986 to 2006, Oakville grew by 90% in those 20 years. Growth felt like it was running wild. We were losing trees and green space. We were running short of rinks, pools, parks, fields, and uh we were kind of crowded in our community centers. Taxes jumped without warning. Tonight, I'm going to ask and answer the same question for the 20th time. How are we doing now? And I'll add a second one. Where do we go next? First, let's remember a friend. This year, we lost Ward 5 counselor Mark Grant. Mark gave this council 23 years. Mark spoke for transit, for parks, for public spaces, and for food on every table. He loved Oakville, and you felt it the moment he walked in. We also remember Otto Jelanik, who served this town and this country so well and for so long. We thank people who gave this town years of hard work, including our retiring counselors and staff. Their work is part of our story. Here is where our never- ending story has brought us from. In 2007, at the first state of the town, we set three goals. One, to plan our finances with a long-term view. Two, to measure how livable we are for everyone. And three, to lead in bringing businesses here and keeping them here. We set out to be a town where you can find a good job, raise your kids, grow old, all in one place. Now, tonight I report that our economic outlook is great in these uncertain times if we will all pull together. Last week, I went to the federal investment summit. Minister Melanie Melanie Jolie told us that investors around the world ask her one question. Where can I put my money with confidence for the long term? Her answer was Canada. My answer is Oakville, Canada. We have the numbers to back that up. Site Selection Magazine named us one of Canada's top places to invest for the eighth year in a row. Site Selection said, "We ranked second in Canada for new investment with more than $3 billion. We ranked fourth for new jobs with nearly 2,000. Every one of those dollars is a vote of trust. Businesses chose to grow here. People chose to build a life here. We earned that trust one person and one business at a time. Our business concierge program helps owners with permits, funding, hiring, and room to grow. We want to do better still, so we keep listening to ideas for all things to improve. Our best edge is our people. More than 80% of us finished college or university. Almost half studied business, architecture, engineering, or computer science. When the province decided where to consolidate its science and laboratory operations in a new multi-ministry complex, it chose Oakville because the specialized talent is already here. Our talent drives our economic growth. Professional services here grew 24% since our last report. Life sciences, film, digital media, and advanced manufacturing grew right beside them. These are our target sectors in our economic strategic plan. We build on what we do well. Our location helps us, too. We sit where the QEDW, the 40 403, and the 407 meet in the middle of Lake Ontario's shore between Toronto and Hamilton. And we have Sheridan. At this year's Oscars, two Sheridan grads went head-to-head in the same category. Maggie Kang is the one who won best animated feature for K-pop Demon Hunters, the most watched film in Netflix history. Past Oscar winner Doy, who's now a vice president at Pixer, still comes back to campus to mentor the next class. A road to Hollywood runs through Oakville. Investors trust a town that minds its money. We call it performance-based budgeting. It means we measure the outcomes of every tax dollar. For 20 years, our tax increases have matched inflation on average. For the last eight years, our tax increases have run below inflation on average. The world has noticed. The John's Hopkins Center for Government Excellence calls Oakville a great example of budgeting for results. The University of Toronto's Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance ranked us first in Canada for financial strength. Our new growth added $1.6 billion to our property assessment roles for this taxation year. We are fifth in Ontario for assessment growth. Assessment growth takes the pressure off existing taxpayers. We also plan 10 years out. This year, council approved a new asset management plan. Staff confirmed we have the financing for every project planned in the next 10 years. You notice good financial planning most when you don't have it. A road might fail before there's money to fix it. A rink might fill up before the next one gets built. Not here. Our high standards for infrastructure also help attract new businesses to grow our jobs and our economy. And we also built a second source of non- tax revenue. We created and own Oakville Enterprises. OEC has been paying the town a $6.1 million dividend. This year, it paid a 12.2 million dividend. We expect to reach a $20 million dividend by 2029. Senior executives at St. John Energy, the city-owned utility in New Brunswick, called me to learn how we did it. They want to follow our example. The OEC dividends give us the ability to fund community features we will not be able to afford any other way without raising taxes. They will help fund the downtown cultural hub, a new central library and performing arts center. They will help fund our eighth community center. They will help fund new streetscapes in Kerr Village and Bronny and the Bronny waterfront strategy. They also helped fund our share of the new hospital construction from 2011 to 2015. Other cities had to charge a special hospital tax. We did not. Our new hospital expansion under construction right now will add 111 beds to OTM with no cost to the town this time. The province can add those beds so affordably and so fast because I insisted in return for our funding in 2011 that the hospital be built with room to grow. Now good facilities planning gets us good places. Think of Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Center. Think of Trafogar Park and the Oakville Trafoger, the Oakville Trafoger Community Center. Think of the new senior center on Kerr Street and our new libraries. Think of our just opened and completed community center expansion of 16 mile sports complex. And we keep moving, too. We keep people moving. This year, Oakville Transit carried more than 5 million riders. 16mi sports complex is a boost for our tourism. This November, the Hockey Canada U17 World Challenge brings the best young players in the world to our town and our ice. Japan's figure skating pairs team trained there for years before they won Olympic gold in Milan this year. They called our rink their favorite place to skate. They called Oakville their second home. When my son played sports, we drove to places all over Ontario. We sports parents sat in other folks places and wished Oakville had facilities like theirs. Now I walk the concourse at 16 Mile. I visit our indoor FIFA soccer field and our cricket pitch. And I hear parents from other towns wish they had facilities as good as ours. We keep up with our needs. Now, in my 20 years as your mayor, Oakville grew by 48%. Down from 90% in the previous 20 years, and we have tripled the square footage of our community facilities. We now have seven distinct community centers, one in every ward. That's about 35,000 residents per center and way better than the 55,000 residents per center in 2006 when we had only three. A livable town must be a safe town, too. And Halton has the lowest crime rate of any large police service in Canada. Numbers are cold comfort when crime happens to you. You need to feel safe. We want you to feel safe. We act. We pull back our own town spending plans in order to back our police with the extra resources their plan calls for without a bigger hit on the taxpayer. And we pushed hard for the bail reform that's come. And good relationships are what won us the new Halton courthouse going north of our hospital to replace crowded, outdated, and unsafe courouses in Milton and Burlington. Add it all up and the country has noticed. The Globe and Mail ranked Canada's most livable cities this year among cities from a 100,000 to 500,000. We came first in Ontario and second in Canada. Out of all 454 places, small and large and huge, we came sixth. We took first in Ontario for our mix of people, for our community life, for our economy, for transportation, and for climate. I call that five livability gold medals. People call us livable so much now. We're famous for it. And a ranking is not the point. You are the point. In our 2006 survey, 90 in our 2026 survey, 90% of you rated town services well. 82% said you trust your local government. 81% say you get good value for your tax dollar. 82% say Oakville beats the rest of the GTA as a place to live. And now we earn that trust every year. And sometimes we've had to fight for this town. This year, new technology brought a new challenge, a huge artificial intelligence data center in our northeast. We were the first in Canada to impose a freeze. Last week, Missaga Council adopted a similar measure. As a result, we will hear from experts and from you about noise and power and water and what belongs next door before anything gets built. Our hardest test right now is Midtown. Canada needs more homes. The province has set a target of one and a half million new homes by 2031. The province gave Oakville a share of 33,000. That's the province's number, not ours. We do not build homes, but we get to plan for them. We need and want housing for our young people and our newcomers. We have only so much land, and we have neighborhoods we want to protect from intensification. That's why we plan growth where transit can carry it. Midtown sits at the busiest and oldest GO station outside Union. Height and density became flash points. Proposals in Midtown once reached 61 stories. Provincial zoning orders in April capped heights at 56. We had adopted our own plan, OPA70, built through years of work by staff, council, and residents unanimously in February of 2025. The province has not yet approved it. The plan we passed calls for homes with the roads, pipes, parks, and services that turn buildings into neighborhoods and complete communities. During all this, I met with the acting minister of infrastructure alongside our MPP, Minister Steven Crawford, looking for a less intensive result in Midtown. In April, a minister's zoning order allowed up to 56 floors on the transit oriented community for sites. A promise came with the minister's order. The province the province promised to work with the town and the developer on changes that quote will result in building heights of 38 stories unquote. The number of homes would stay the same. The community benefits would stay the same. And that's triple what comes without the province's transit oriented communities program. The idea in the province's promise, in plain words, is spread the homes over more land so no tower has to stand so tall. There is ample public land designated for residential growth. to achieve this without giving up any of the parkland planned for in OPA70. So from 56 stories to 38 or at least the prospect. A 38 story cap is only two stories more than the maximum that would be allowed under OPA7 when approved. Recently, this council voted unanimously and with full public support for a 38tory cap on the GE lands. My talks with the province and the developer are moving in a constructive goodfaith direction. I'm now confident a proposal will come to the next council. We will be able to have what Ontario promised in April, less density and lower heights. Council will decide whether to accept or reject any proposal. We settled the power plant, the amalgamation threat, and Glenn Abbey in private talks with the province. We won all three times. That is how you win. You don't negotiate in public. Unions don't, businesses don't. You don't. When you negotiate a new job or a pay raise. Lately, I've been surprised by what looked like efforts to misrepresent the talks that the province promised in April. These efforts seem aimed at stirring up opposition to the talks. If the talks fail, we will get one thing, 56 floor buildings. As your mayor, I have worked with three premers and 14 ministers of municipal affairs from two different political parties. I'm proud to have had a good relationship with each of them. Good relationships with other ministers gives me good news to share tonight on infrastructure. The Minister of Transportation and his parliamentary assistant have reassured me that the Royal Windsor interchange at the QEDW, the Kur Street underpass, and the eastward expansion of our GO station will be there when we need them. and the Minister of Infrastructure confirmed that the provincial land holdings across our northwest will be available for us to increase our parkland. Acquisition of the first parcel is already approved. Now, the municipal act gives the province full power over us. It can create us. It can merge us. It can order us to do things. It can change our plans. That is why maintaining good relationships has always looked to me like the best way to do this job. I have one more story to tie our past to our future. Ford Canada has been part of Oakville for generations. It gave thousands of families a good job, a career, and a steady life. Over the last few years, that future looked shaky. Real families lived with real worry. In the recession of 2008, I founded the Ontario Auto Mayors and I still chair it to advocate for the industry. More than once, Ottawa and Queens Park have come to the table and put real money into saving the auto industry. We all stood with the auto workers of Unifor local 707 and they joined with us at the auto mayors for an even stronger voice. In the latest test of the auto industry's future in Canada and in Oakville, Ford chose Oakville. Ford invested billions here to build its Superduty pickups. Test trucks come off the line every day now. Trucks for market follow later this year. Workers are being recalled and retained, retrained for a new plant, for the new plant. The plant can build as many as 100,000 trucks a year and employ thousands of Unifor workers and others. Ford's CEO Jim Farley said this in his July consultation with investors. Our quote, "Our manufacturing operations in Oakville are really important to our future at Ford." Unquote. A town cannot ask for a clearer vote of confidence from a major employer and manufacturer. Unifor president Lana Payne said it even better. Oakville shows all of us right now what is possible, she said, and what happens when workers, governments, and companies are all rowing in the same direction. Sometimes the best thing a town can win is a future for something it already loves and depends upon for good paying jobs. Since my first state of the town address, we have faced a recession, a pandemic, trade fights, and now tariffs. Through all of it, our residents, our businesses, and our kids moved forward with purpose and confidence. We cannot choose our challenges, but we can choose to believe in ourselves and keep moving forward. And what is Oakville? Oakville is neighbors who know each other's names. It's the main street that still feels like a hometown. It's the lakefront where everyone likes to stroll on a summer evening. We live on the treaty lands of the Missagas of the Credit First Nation. They cared for this land long before us. Over the past 20 years, we've cared for our part of the land and changed for the better and the stronger. We have created a world famous city that calls itself a town and now feels like a global village. People have come from every continent to build companies, raise families, and put their talents to work. The prime minister has called on Canada to build new global partnerships. Our talent and our ties around the world are how Oakville can answer that call. And we cannot wait for American politics to change. Support for tariffs runs deep there. No matter who wins, Canada must widen its circle. Oakville already has friends and family on every continent. Oakville already has a head start if we will only use it. Now, part of the state of the town this year, as it is every four years when I give this speech, is an election. This council has set a course for the future that I think is positive and promising and done so amid what can only be called challenging times. Any council can change direction. So, we don't know what will happen. What we know for sure is that there will be at least six new counselors this fall. The new council will inherit a strong town and a dedicated and professional staff. Ours is a town that aims high and values our livability. After 20 years of these reports, how do I say we're doing? The state of our town is strong. Strong as an oak. Our town takes its name from the oak. An oak impresses you because it grows steady. Its roots go deep before its branches reach wide. It stands up to storms. It gives shade. Every spring it puts out new growth. This is Oakville. Some of what we build today will not show its full worth for decades. It will belong to people who never knew our names. That is the job. Leave the town stronger than we find it. And that work is not finished and never finished. A great town is never finished. After 20 years, I can report this. The roots are deep. The branches are strong. There's room for new growth. Strong towns are not built in a moment. They're built over time. They're built together. They're built to last. Where do we go next? Wherever we go, let's go the way we got here. Together and forward. Look at our town crest and you'll find one word to guide us. Avante. Keep moving forward. Thank you for helping us do that. Good night. Council, um would uh would two of you like to move receipt of the report? Councelor Longo, Councelor Adams. Any objection? Madame Clerk, the report is adopted. Uh, council, we need to pass the bylaw that confirms the proceedings of the special council. That's 2026 137 as listed. Councelor Lchenna, councelor Shia, thank you. Any objection? There being none, that's carried. Thank you everybody. That ends the meeting and it's been a pleasure working with you and I look forward to the next time.